THANK YOU to our guest bloggers from 2017!
We're right in the middle of a season where a lot of us are giving thanks and reflecting on the year we have had. For some of us it is because of American or Canadian Thanksgiving, Japanese Labour Thanksgiving, or Turkish National Day of Thanks, or upcoming holidays such as Hanukkah, Christmas, or Kwanzaa. For…
Dual Coding and Learning Styles
By Megan Sumeracki Dual coding and learning styles sound similar, but are not quite the same thing. While dual coding has scientific evidence backing its use, while learning styles has been repeatedly tested and shown not to improve learning. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post (see here), I have been working with a team…
GUEST POST: How Exercise Improves Student Mental Health
The activity connectionIn the last decade, research on the link between exercise and mental health has increased significantly. A paper (4) reviewed the research since 2011 into the link between exercise and depression, self-esteem, anxiety and cognitive functioning and found that the strongest link was found between exercise and cognitive function. For depression, the intervention…
Online Learning: Tips for Students and Parents
By Althea Need KaminskeLearning online presents different challenges for students than learning face-to-face in a classroom. Whether you are an older student learning online in your spare time, a university student taking online courses in combination with face-to-face classes, or even a younger (or much younger) student learning online as a safety precaution during quarantine…
Learning in a Museum
By Althea Need Kaminske This past week I had the opportunity, along with Megan Sumeracki, to talk with docents about how they can use the science of learning in their work. As educators, docents face an interesting set of challenges when teaching visitors about their collections. Namely that they have a limited amount of time…
Weekly Digest #134: How to Sleep Well
4) Ask A Sleep Doctor: The Questions That Keep You Up At Night, a podcast with W. Christopher Winter, author of The Sleep Solution: Why Your Sleep is Broken and How to Fix It Science Friday Q&A with neurologist and sleep expert. Listeners call in to ask their questions about sleep. 5) I Fixed My Terrible…
Forgetting to Remember
Another explanation for how and why we forget has been in terms of disuse or decay (2, 3). Sometimes we forget things simply because we haven’t remembered it in awhile. For example, you can probably remember what you had for lunch yesterday. How about last week? Last month? Unless there was a reason for you…
Weekly Digest #129: Students Under Stress
When one of our very first guest bloggers reached out to us recently asking about resources for students under severe stress, we realized that we hadn’t broached this issue on our blog yet. This hugely important issues will take more than a quick digest to explore, so expect more on this topic in the future.…
A Brief Overview of Working Memory
Working memory refers to your ability to manipulate and remember information over a short period of time (about two minutes). It’s very similar to short term memory, but when we use the term working memory we are emphasizing the manipulation of information. For example, if someone gave you a telephone number to write down, you…
Time Management: What is it, who has it, and can you improve it?
Time management can refer to a wide range of behaviors and can look very different from person to person. There are lots of different systems and approaches to time management. Making a to-do list, keeping a planner, setting event reminders in your phone, setting goals, prioritizing tasks, and marking events on a calendar can all…
